Class 5 captivated by author Ken Spillman

After days of smog filled mornings, 18th November 2017 was surprisingly a brighter day and the most appropriate for an open air story telling session by Mr. Ken Spillman, popular author of many books of different genres.

The Indian School was one of the first to arrive at the ILF Samanvay Festival at the India Habitat Centre that morning for a first hand experience of how the Australian author weaves the plot for his stories, especially the Jake series. 75 students of class 5 attended the workshop to get an exposure to the wonderful world of stories and to be told about the art of writing good stories. It was an event that promised to inspire many to be authors some day!

The venue, the amphitheatre, added flavour, and Mr. Spillman, author of 70 published stories was indeed at his riveting best. He began the session by reading one of his favourite self composed stories, The Strange Story of Felicity Frown. The children were delighted as he read the story with great joy and enthusiasm. When he bellowed into the mike and made the pigeons flutter in alarm, the story literally came alive. It was just so real! He then went on to read his own impressions on the fable Jack and the Beanstalk and also enacted a few parts from his Jake series.

Then came the best part. Spillman spoke of how to write good stories, how to make people appear real through our imaginations. He had a simple mathematical formula - Character + situation = story. Anything and everything can be the starting point of a story. A bag and a window could be the entry point to new worlds. You just need to let your imagination flow freely. Dont worry too much about the plot beforehand, he said. On how to develop and end the story he added It will begin to build itself once you have a rough idea of the story you want to tell. Then it is important to develop characters, especially the central one. Then there is need to stir up some suspense and drama to bring the story to a tipping point. And then find a way to tie up all the threads.

Even though it sounded simple, yet the reality is, it takes years of toil to perfect the art of story telling.

Mr. Spillman patiently answered all the questions that children had. The children wanted to know just about everything- from his favourite books, food, to his favourite place in the world, and even his defining moments.

The experience was so special for the young listeners that it brought wide smiles on their faces when they parted with their precious pocket money to buy autographed copies of some of his books.

This event struck such a creative chord in children that they wanted to go and listen to many such authors like Ken Spillman.